


Flesh Wound

by Shayvaalski



Series: The Kids Are Alright [17]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Badbrains, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M, Medical Trauma, Parent-Child Relationship, Parentlock, sebastian moran minder of highly sensitive people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 15:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7623475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Consulting criminal is a risky line of business; Siobhan Moran was never going to make it through unscathed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flesh Wound

**Author's Note:**

> This contains nonexplicit descriptions of a gunshot wound, and some explicit badbrains. There's also some half-explicit hints about some of the things Siobhan went through as a kid, before Jim. Originally posted on tumblr.

“She’ll be fine.” Sebastian straightened up, reached for a towel, and began to scrub the blood from his hands. “Missed the bone on both, missed the big artery on her leg. She’s got your luck, Jim.” Then, very casually, “Have to put her on something for the pain, though.”

There was, behind him, a noise like two people, one small and one large, shifting their weight—before either of them could do more than draw breath Sebastian laid a hand against the tabletop. Jim hissed, long; Tommy was silent. Still, he didn’t turn; just looked down at his daughter laid out on the table, white and strained, fingers clenched around each other on her chest. She was maybe conscious, or maybe not. There hadn’t been time for more than a long two swallows of the strongest whiskey Seb could find on short notice; he touched her knuckles, gently, and was gratified when Siobhan’s hands relaxed, just a little. Her eyes flickered beneath their lids, and then she opened then just enough for him to see her track movement, focus on his face.

“Good lass,” he murmured, and Siobhan breathed out in a soft parody of a laugh, closed her eyes again.

Only then did Sebastian turn. Jim looked mutinous, or just short of it; Tom was a full yard separate from him, his focus on Siobhan and his attention on Moriarty, the poorly-contained vibration of him. Both men were barely in check. 

“She’ll live,” Sebastian said, firmly; their attention flicked to him and away.

“Was there a  _doubt,_ Bastian?” and Jim’s voice was at its most dangerous, drawling and Northern. 

“The way you two are fucking lurking about you’d think she was at death’s bloody door,” he snapped back, and took a step away from his daughter and towards Jim. “Which she  _isn’t._  She never was. Tommy knows what he’s about, the pressure held, Siobhan is fine.”

"Thomas let her get  _shot_.” Jim whirled, eyes black and shoulders hunched. “And not a mark on him—”

"Mum.” Siobhan was hoarse but calm, and Seb noticed with distant interest that her childhood accent was back, when it had been fading since her and Tommy’s move to London. She was up on one elbow, carefully avoiding flexing at the hip, and she said again, “Mum. Leave him.”

Jim’s nostrils flared; he and Siobhan locked gazes for a long moment, and then she started to lever herself further up. 

“No,” Sebastian said, hard, and put a hand against her shoulder. Siobhan had always been slim; now she was slight, tense as a bowstring about to snap. Her lean forward was the barest pressure into his palm. “Enough. We can get into this later. Right now I have to move Siobhan, and I have to do it without hurting her, so the both of you can calm. Down.  _Now_.”

Jim’s breath was ragged but Siobhan’s was worse, and after a moment he looked away. She sagged, and it was only Tommy’s swift movement forward that kept her from hitting the tabletop with the back of her head. Another moment passed, too long for comfort, and at the end of it, Sebastian turned his back on Jim, carefully and deliberately, and ran a hand through his hair. Their daughter was awake, but only just, and as he watched she closed her eyes again, clearly exhausted. Long experience suggested the lull wouldn’t last for more than a few moments, so Sebastian resigned himself to the pain he was about to cause and scooped her up.

The noise Siobhan made was almost animal. But not what he was used to, not the chest-deep snarl that seemed to be all her own or the roar she must have gotten from Jim, but a sound he’d last heard a lifetime ago in India from a wounded tiger and Seb froze mid-stride. Siobhan pressed her forehead against his collarbone, neck arched so that all the tendons stood out, and he could see the muscles of her jaw clench. 

"Easy,” he said, even as he saw Tommy lurch forward, his face a study in single-mindedness, and then stop. Sebastian shifted his grip just a little, holding her more carefully. “Bhan. I’m going to walk now. Yeah?”

She nodded, and the effort it cost her was clear. But it meant she was still with them, still lucid, and Jim must have realized the same thing because he groaned like a beast in pain and twisted his own neck sideways in relief. 

When Sebastian came back into the kitchen, after a long time easing his daughter down into bed, Tommy was standing with one hand on Jim’s shoulder, awkward and afraid but strong; and Seb had never been so grateful before in all his life.   
  
———

“Mr. Moran—Seb—” Tommy’s voice was a blur of concern and measured fear in the doorway, and Jim turned to look at him only slowly, half his attention still on the files in front of him. The files of the two women and one man who had been unwise enough to take positions as snipers for the Galway lot. Sebastian was already on his feet by the time Jim processed what the O’Doyle boy was holding.

The smell of matches lit and then blown out filled the room, and his mouth.

“What—” started Sebastian, and then Jim shoved by both of them, slamming the boy back against the wall in his rush towards Siobhan.

“Jesus fuck, Jim!”

The words followed him like drifting smoke as he took the corner, one hand on the doorframe to steady himself,  _not as young as we once were, eh, boss,_ and Jim on a good day had a memory like a steel trap, all twisting corridors and locked doors and he followed them as he ran the length of the short hallway, flung back a deadbolt as he shouldered through Siobhan’s door—

—when she looked up her eyes (his eyes, dark as night as pits as snakes) showed no recognition except faintly, distantly, theoretically, no emotion except something that might have been hope or might have been terror, he has seen this before, Jim has seen this before and he had hoped to never see it again. 

“Siobhan,” he said, gently, so gently, and held out his hand. She looked at it, all doubt; he remembered without wanting to the way his head had ached for days, after, how Sebastian had pulled him off the pain medication when he fell out of time once, twice; and Jim kept his hand still and soft. Siobhan put her head a little to one side, looked at his face, his wrist, and hers, and put her palm against his and said, with the relief of years, “Yes,” and then, more suddenly, “Oh. Fuck, mum—”

“I’ve got you.” Jim crashed to his knees and held on with both hands, anchoring her with grip and gaze and humming certainty. “You’re safe, pet, you’re home,  _I’ve got you_.”

Siobhan groaned and he echoed her; the risk of being caught and held was high, higher than he liked, higher than it had been for years but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but keeping his daughter safe and whole.

_How bad?_

_Too bad._

_Can you bear it?_

There was no answer. Jim gripped harder, his nails digging into her skin, and finally she laughed, a high soft huff of air, and looked at him, and then away, and then back, like a magnet seeking North. 

"Focus,” he said, and then again, “focus, pet. Siobhan.” Each syllable like a dropped pin. His daughter (of course his daughter, what else could she be? what other man-shaped beast?) bowed her head and shivered.

Jim knew by the feel of it that the tremor in her bone and muscle was something another man might call fear, and freed one hand enough to touch her hair. Felt her tense. Felt her ease. Behind him in the doorway Seb was silent, the boy a tall and trembling shape behind him, and Siobhan looked at neither of them for a long time. 

———

“Tommy.”

“Saoiste?”

There was a pause. He had the idea it was a thoughtful kind of pause. Tommy risked a glance over at her; Siobhan was lying on her back, one hand just above the bullet wound in her hip, blinking slowly. The other hand gripped the back of the couch so hard its knuckles were white. He let the chair he was leaning back in touch all four feet back to the floor. Her head turned towards him.

“I’m not enjoying this." 

"Not enjoying what?”

“This.” The gesture was very small, very contained; and if Siobhan wasn’t enjoying this experience then it was nothing,  _nothing_ to how Tommy felt about it. “The movement.”

_We’re not moving_. “I know.”  _We’ve been over this_. He swallowed, hard, and Siobhan looked at him with wide-pupilled, shallow eyes.   ~~  
~~

“Come here." 

Tommy got up, wordless, and fit himself onto the couch at the top of it. She’d left space for him, just above her head, and Siobhan pressed the crown of it into his thigh almost instantly. Her blink was still slow, and just slightly mistimed, the left eyelid moving a fraction of a second before the right. He needed to talk to Sebastian, or she did. There were worse things than pain. 

Siobhan put up her free hand, and he took it, placed his other hand on top of the one clutching the couch. He could feel the tendons standing out.

"Hold onto me." 

Tommy held on.

———

Siobhan took a long time getting down the back steps; she could see her father in the garden, watching her navigate, see his patient restraint. The crutches were a compromise; not that Siobhan had a choice when she could barely touch foot to ground without a hiss of pain running from thigh to hip, but dad had wanted her in bed and that was intolerable. 

So: crutches. Slow movements. Carefulness even in sleep.

Eventually Siobhan folded down next to him, more exhaustion than grace, and said, “I crushed the rest of the pills and mixed them with sand. And coffee grounds. Just in case. They’re in a bag on the counter.”

"Why?”

“The trash was full.” Siobhan put her hands against the ground to quiet the tremor in her wrists, half exertion from the trek across the garden and half helpless, seething rage. The earth slewed sideways, briefly; she closed her eyes and it settled. 

“You know what I mean, Bhan.” Sebastian’s voice was firm and she clung to it like a lifeline, rough against her palms, almost painful; worth it, more than worth it. Siobhan opened her eyes, met his gray-green ones, glanced away. Holding eye contact with him had never been easy, not like holding it with mum.

“I couldn’t.” He raised an eyebrow at her; Siobhan shrugged, fluid. “It wasn’t worth it, I’d rather just hurt. Pain is— _more_  than tolerable, compared to the last few days.” 

"You planning to elaborate on that?”

“No." 

Sebastian laughed, a short  _ha!_  Siobhan had heard him use on mum hundreds of times, and she plucked a blade of grass while he sat back and considered. After a moment she leaned to the side, settled her shoulder against his for a handful of seconds, as long as she could bear then said, “It won’t happen again, dad.”

"And that’s something you can promise, is it?”

Her hand found the place on her leg that would someday be a scar; Siobhan ghosted her fingers over it, pressed down just the slightest bit. 

“Yes.”

“Siobhan—”

“ _Yes._  You’re not asking about me getting shot.” Siobhan kept her eyes on the horizon, half-lidded and inward-focused, breathing shallowly. “I can’t do anything about that; you couldn’t and neither could mum, I’ve seen the marks on both of you—I mean after. It won’t happen again.”

Her father’s hand settled onto the back of her neck, reassuring. Siobhan twisted beneath it, then eased, let her eyes sag closed and her muscles loosen. He stroked her hair (just barely long enough to braid, now, and still strangely heavy against her nape) without speaking for a long time, and then said, gently, “Spooked you too, huh?”

Siobhan didn’t answer at first, and when she did it was with her eyes fixed on the sky. ”There are things that are—easier, to forget. They don’t matter to what I am now.” She leaned against him again, hard and brief and fierce, against her father, against the first fixed point in her life, and then Siobhan got slowly to her feet, one had braced on his broad shoulder. Tested her balance, stood alone. Sebastian handed up the crutches peaceably enough; she took them, then smiled her mother’s smile and turned without a word.

His eyes on her back were both familiar and unbearable, and without them, Siobhan thought as she laid a hand on the doorknob, she knew that she would fall. 


End file.
